Eden Burning

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘I can handle it,’ Helen said, grimacing, ‘but thanks for the raid. I get to go into a potentially hostile area against people armed with military weapons, plus the management here are probably not going to like it.’

  ‘George Frost can go fuck himself. Like it or not, this town contracted Palladium to enforce the law here and that is just what we’re going to do.’

  New York Metro, 28th July.

  By eleven a.m., there was more. At dawn, thirty-two members of the Church of God’s Mind based in an old church in Topeka had committed suicide by poison. Ray Rogers and his team were out at the site checking that they had all gone voluntarily and trying to figure out why they all seemed to be plugged into the internet. As far as Fox was concerned, rather him than her.

  Then there was a weird notification from the UNTPP which came in around ten thirty-eight. That had asked for all agencies involved with law enforcement to report any debris falling from the sky in a line through from Louisville to Washington. Control in New York had passed it through to Fox, just for information, and Fox had sent a message up to Prokhorov Station to see whether Jason was willing to give her more on it. Twenty minutes later, a voice-only call had come through.

  ‘We do not really have much more,’ Jason said on the time-delayed connection. ‘What we know is that a regular spacecraft on the Earth–Moon shuttle run failed to decelerate for orbital insertion. It hit the atmosphere at around thirty-five kilometres per second.’

  ‘That’s… fast,’ Fox said.

  ‘It is approaching the maximum speed a standard lunar transit shuttle is capable of,’ Kit supplied.

  And a second or so later, Jason said, ‘It suggests… Ah, Kit, yes. It suggests that the ship was on full burn until it ran out of fuel, or close to it. There has been no indication of survivors.’

  ‘How many aboard?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Twelve crew, twenty-six passengers. There may be some parts which made it to ground level and may give some clue as to what happened. Hence the advisory.’

  ‘Yeah, but… That ship set out from lunar orbit, and then it pretty much had to start firing its engines and not stop. It should have been operating on automatics with the crew watching for problems. This would almost have to be deliberate.’

  ‘Unless it was a massive systems failure. Yes.’

  Fox frowned and then shrugged. ‘Okay. Good luck figuring that one out, Jason.’

  ‘Ah, thankfully, mon chère, it is not my job to do so. Unless it turns out to be terrorism related, of course, but I can see no reason for terrorists to do something like that without staking a claim.’

  ~~~

  The main news multicasts had been filled with news of the various suicides and incidents around the world all day, but in the six p.m. update, they actually had something new to add.

  ‘With apocalyptic prophecies and worldwide cult suicides, viewers would be excused for thinking the end of the world was nigh,’ the presenter said. ‘Now it seems that space is not safe either as the crew of flight LET seven zero three crash their ship into the atmosphere at over one hundred and twenty thousand kilometres per hour. More on this, and other breaking news, after this break.’

  ‘The crash is linked to the suicides?’ Marie asked. Fox was down in Sam’s lounge and they were all watching the news feeds. Marie had declared an interest after the shootings in Times Spire.

  ‘Not impossible,’ Fox said.

  ‘The question,’ Kit said, ‘is how the news agencies are linking it. Jason had no intelligence to connect the crash with the meme this morning.’

  ‘I believe I know the answer to that,’ Belle replied, appearing beside Kit. ‘INN are bragging about it. I can display that channel, but I am recording should you wish to review.’

  ‘Leave it on IB-Sixty-two,’ Fox said. ‘They’re likely to be more informative and less braggy.’

  ‘More on the crash of flight LET seven zero three now,’ the presenter said as the virtual screen cut back from the advert blips that Belle had routinely muted. ‘At ten thirty-eight Eastern, the lunar transit shuttle LET seven zero three impacted the atmosphere over North America killing the thirty-eight people aboard as it burned up and exploded.’

  The display cut to show what looked like a smoking pit in a field with a lot of people in hazardous-materials suits standing around it, and the presenter went on in voiceover. ‘Twenty-six kilometres east of Charleston in the Virginia and West region, safety personnel are still dealing with the fall to Earth of a large section of the spacecraft’s nuclear-pulse engine. Officials have stated that the radiation level is not dangerous. Examination and disposal of the wreckage will, however, take days.’

  The studio display cut back in. ‘Until now, the crash was being viewed as a tragic accident.’

  ‘Bit of a strange accident,’ Fox muttered.

  ‘However, late this afternoon, INN received an email from the sister of one of the crew of LET seven zero three. According to Miss Georgie Patton of Detroit–Chicago Metro, her brother, Drafus, sent the message via lunar relay to arrive at eleven a.m. this morning, just after the ship burned up. The message claims that the entire crew had decided to end their lives by crashing their ship. The reason given is that the world is going to end due to the arrival of Halley’s Comet.’

  ‘I have the complete recording from INN,’ Belle said. ‘They seemed rather gleeful to be able to play the message in full while only clips are available to the other stations. They have, apparently, contacted both NAPA and the UNTPP regarding the message.’

  ‘It’s crazy!’ Marie exclaimed. ‘Someone makes up some stupid meme about comets being harbingers of doom, so a spaceship crew decides to fly their ship into the atmosphere? I didn’t think it was really possible to get someone to do something like that with memetics.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Kit said. ‘Not exactly anyway. Very precise, personalised campaigns aimed at a small group or individual can have a profound effect on someone, but we call that brainwashing. Under normal circumstances, you can only get extreme results like this from those predisposed to such actions. The meme will give them a push, if you will.’

  Fox nodded. ‘The early research into memetics was academic, but it soon attracted funding from military and intelligence agencies. It might be thought of primarily as a way to get people to buy soft drinks, but it has some military applications. Mostly, it’s used to try to stop the enemy fighting effectively. Morale destruction, or making them believe their fight isn’t just. Morale reduction can work quite well under the right circumstances. War is Hell, and most people want to not be in it when they find they are. It’s not so good against fanatical opponents, however.’

  ‘Because they are already “owned” by a powerful meme,’ Kit agreed. ‘I find it somewhat difficult to believe that this flight crew all fell to the same memetic artefact and acted in this way. Spaceship crews are generally not prone to suicide since, where they are, they have generally killed themselves early in their career.’

  ‘So, you think that suicide email is bogus?’ Marie asked.

  ‘I think that the UNTPP will be examining it and all the other information they can gather concerning the crash of flight LET seven zero three.’ Kit glanced at Fox. ‘I also suspect that Jason may be involved. I’ve looked at the original message received by Miss Patton.’ She raised her hand, throwing up a new display window.

  In it, a man of no more than twenty-five with cropped, blonde hair was looking into camera. His blue eyes were wild, his expression close to terrified. ‘It’s the ghost ships, Georgie. We’ve seen one. They came in with the comet and now they’re coming for us. We’ve seen one. We’re next.’

  Kit paused the replay and gave Fox a meaningful look.

  ‘Ghost ships,’ Fox said. ‘You’re right, Jason may be involved.’

  ~~~

  ‘The raid went down ninety minutes ago,’ Helen said via teleconference. ‘I think Cross was kind of eager about it, but it was all smooth and efficient. And we hit
some major pay dirt.’

  ‘What was the final haul?’ Fox asked.

  ‘We’re still doing the final accounting, but we got several cases of those assault rifles, grenade launchers, close-assault weapons, more pistols than you can shake a stick at, six ground-to-air missile launchers–’

  ‘Were they planning a war?’

  ‘Kind of.’ Fox raised an eyebrow at Helen’s image and Helen shrugged. ‘The ones we took in on Wednesday night, the ones who went nuts, are still pretty nuts. They keep going on about the coming war. The comet is a sign of the coming age of conflict and we all have to be ready for when they try to invade our homes, murder our women, and rape our men, all that stuff.’

  ‘Isn’t it supposed to be–’

  ‘Hey! We’re independent women here. No way is it going down the old-fashioned way on my watch. Anyway, these guys are way off the deep end, and a fair number of the other gun club members are unhinged, but not as bad. They all had the same idea about the “coming chaos,” but the seven who shot the place up seem to have decided that it was starting now. If they had family, they killed them so that no one could do anything worse to them, and then they went out shooting.’

  ‘Expecting to get killed themselves.’

  ‘Nope,’ Helen said, shaking her head. ‘They’re soldiers in the coming war. They expected to keep fighting. I did say they were nuts, right?’

  Fox frowned. ‘This whole situation is nuts. You heard about the ship that crashed?’

  ‘Uh-huh. I heard that was some sort of suicide thing.’

  ‘Except that it doesn’t seem right. The email message they sent said something about ghost ships. Jason mentioned them when I was up on Prokhorov in April. They were linking them to UA, but this guy was linking them to aliens from Halley’s Comet or something.’

  ‘It’s a popular meme in literature and video,’ Kit supplied, popping into the conversation. ‘There was a film released in the nineteen-eighties that featured space vampires travelling in a spaceship which followed in the wake of Halley’s Comet. And then there was the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide which was prompted, apparently, by the belief that Comet Hale–Bopp had an alien spacecraft following it. That is especially pertinent under the circumstances.’

  ‘Didn’t they think they would somehow ascend to meet the aliens when they died?’ Helen asked.

  ‘That was their belief, yes. Thankfully, with modern telescopes and radar systems, we can be quite sure that there is nothing following in the wake of Halley’s Comet this time around.’

  ‘Oh, Kit,’ Fox said, shaking her head, ‘you still have much to learn. Small things like facts are not going to stop the nutjobs from believing things they have no evidence for. Never have. Never will.’

  29th July.

  ‘We have an issue,’ Kit said as soon as Fox emerged from her sleep cycle at six a.m.

  ‘Good morning, Kit,’ Fox said. ‘Do I need a body to rectify this issue, or can we just run with the viron for now?’ Whatever the case, Fox slipped out of her virtual bed and started for the lounge, Kit following on behind.

  ‘Ultimately, I believe you’ll need a body. However, NAPA have, in the last few minutes, put through a request for investigative support for their Tulsa office.’

  ‘And Ray is still busy with the thing in Topeka?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Helen’s wrapping Saratoga–Ballston… Okay, tell them I’ll fly out there immediately. No, get a flight-time estimate from Pythia and give them an ETA. I’ll start transferring to my frame… Maybe you should get yours ready to come out too. I could probably use the physical assist as well as the software one.’

  Kit smiled, positively beamed in fact. ‘Thank you, Fox. I believe that will be very useful experience for me.’

  ‘No problem, Kit. I probably should have had you along before now. What is it we’re lending assistance with?’

  Kit sighed, some of the bloom gone from her face in an instant. ‘Another mass suicide.’

  Tulsa, Southern Protectorate.

  Once again, Fox walked among scenes of carnage. Pythia was running her two aerial drones by remote, documenting and cataloguing each of the bodies. It was late in the season for tornados, and early in the day, but Fox preferred to leave her forensic assistant and the vertol in the hangar MarTech kept in the concrete bunker that was Tulsa.

  ‘I have to say,’ the man walking along beside Fox said, ‘I was expecting more than one detective and a few cyberframes.’ His name was Brad Rossi and he was a lieutenant with NAPA. Fox had never met the man before, which was not surprising given the area he covered. NAPA had ten lieutenants heading units across the Southern Protectorate with a captain over them. Most of the units were focused on the eastern side of the area, which was where the population was. Rossi, a moderately young man with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a tan that looked like weathering more than sun, managed a unit which covered an area from Tulsa down to the remains of Houston and San Antonio.

  ‘Technically, it’s all frames,’ Fox said. She reached up to tap her forehead. ‘No organics in here either.’

  ‘Oh, uh, yes. I remember seeing a news stream about it.’

  ‘Uh-huh. However, in this case, what I need are eyes on the scene and an overview of the victims. Then I can decide on running swarms over the potential homicides. We are not going to get useful forensic evidence by sweeping this building.’

  Rossi nodded. ‘I kind of figured that out for myself.’ The building had, at one time, been an apartment block, retrofitted for the changes in climate before it was abandoned as the majority of people moved north and east. According to the records NAPA had, the building had been taken over and held by a group calling themselves the Children of the Pleasure Garden in the winter of 2052. No one had looked into what happened to the previous occupants. If this was their idea of a pleasure garden, then they had some odd views. The corridors were dirty, graffiti decorated the walls, and the apartments had been made into dorm rooms with scavenged beds and bedding. The place was a mess before all the blood and corpses had been added. ‘Not my first crime scene.’

  ‘I wasn’t implying it was. Anyway, Pythia’s drones will catalogue and scan every one of the bodies, determine likely cause of death, and document everything. Kit is my PA and, while she probably hasn’t seen as many corpses as either of us, she’s been to a few you should be glad you didn’t see and she’s good with psychology.’ They walked into a room where Kit’s gynoid avatar was standing over a fallen body. Unlike Fox and Rossi, she was not wearing a sealed suit: her frame’s self-cleaning system was designed to eliminate the transmission of STDs, but it did a good job of reducing environmental contamination too. ‘Like that one, for example,’ Fox said, indicating the body. ‘Kit, what have you got there?’

  Kit turned, her strawberry-blonde bob swinging as she did so. In a habit she had developed since getting the body, she had a few strands of hair pinched between her lips. She would suck on them when thinking, but she brushed them aside now. ‘I have seen nothing suggesting that anyone here went unwillingly so far, Fox.’

  Rossi frowned. ‘She was shot twice in the back of the head.’ The woman they were talking about had been shot, execution style. Two rounds to the back of the skull, no exit wounds. She had been kneeling when she died and was now folded over, her arms laid out over her head in a posture which looked as though she was worshipping someone or something.

  ‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘Using Pythia’s ballistics system to make estimations, I have calculated that two four-millimetre rounds were fired from no more than fifteen centimetres. However, the trajectory indicates that she was in a kneeling position at the time, the assailant standing behind her. She was not restrained and she could not have been surprised. People were dying all around her.’ Kit lifted her head and pointed out three more bodies on beds around the room. ‘They cut their own wrists.’ She turned to another lying on a bunk behind her. ‘Self-inflicted gunshot wound. A ten-millimetre weapon, so he did not shoot
this young lady. My current theory is that this one could not bring herself to self-terminate, so she requested that a friend perform the deed.’

  ‘What about these medallions they all have?’ Fox asked.

  Kit raised a sealed evidence bag with a necklace in it. Brass or bronze, probably not gold, it was circular with a raised pattern on it, and hung from a simple cord. The pattern seemed to consist of ten discs interlinked with lines, four discs forming a central column with three set on each side in a pattern which could have been a paddle, or a tree, or some representation of a stellar constellation Fox had never heard of.

  ‘The symbology is that of the Etz haChayim, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The lowest disc is Malkuth, Kingdom, representing the material world, the top one is Keter, Crown, which does not so much represent God as God’s desire to create. God’s will, perhaps. Essentially, the tree represents creation, from God on down to material existence.’

  ‘It kind of looks like there’s one missing,’ Rossi said. ‘You’ve got two, um, boxes, for want of a better word, formed by the ones at the sides. You’ve got one above and one below, if you discount the material one. And you have one in the middle of the bottom box, but not one in the upper box.’

  ‘Well spotted, Lieutenant,’ Kit said, smiling at the man. ‘In some versions of the pattern, that space is occupied by Da’at, Knowledge. The meaning of this varies. It sometimes replaces Keter, representing a reflection of Keter. At other times, it is included in the image, but it represents a unity of all the others. It may, or may not, mean anything that the Children of the Pleasure Garden left it out.’ She lowered the bag. ‘Either way, they were all holding their medallions when they died, even this one, presumably indicating that they were taking their lives in some religious ritual.’

  Fox sighed. ‘Okay, keep checking, but I think we’re going to find they all went willingly. This whole thing is just so messed up.’